Word: underclass
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With so much drug-related horror in the inner cities, it is easy to assume that crack is an exclusively underclass problem. Not so. "I see Key Club members and honor-society members destroyed by crack," says Jeanne Howard of the state attorney's office in Palm Beach County, Fla. There is a terrible symbiosis between the wealthy addicts and the inner-city dealers. Privileged kids who venture into the ghetto to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on crack are largely responsible for the booming drug business...
Contact with people like the Harvard tutors is particularly important for many prisoners because they come from a violent background in which "the street" is home and "officers" are the enemy. Coming from the underclass, such individuals often feel they have no real opportunity to attain conventional standards of success or happiness, writes Rhodes scholar Jay MacLeod '83-'84, who was a PBH officer during his undergraduate years. In his book on disadvantaged Boston-area youth, Ain't No Makin' It, MacLeod argues that such hopelessness leaves people disconnected from mainstream society. Inmates agree, saying they feel shunned and forgotten...
Gang warfare has bedeviled Los Angeles for more than two decades, but the burgeoning crack trade has lately made such groups as the Crips even more willing to kill for the sake of greater profits. Children of the underclass, weaned on violence and despair, have become bloodthirsty entrepreneurs. Some have made small fortunes marketing the cheap, explosive cocaine derivative -- known as "rock" in L.A. -- while settling business differences with state-of-the-art firearms. Many more have wound up in prison or the graveyard...
...this additional health insurance. Dwell instead on Jackson's oft- repeated formulation "There is something wrong with this nation." That sentiment cuts close to the heart of Jackson's appeal to left-liberals who are wont to use their primary votes to send a message. With the black underclass abandoned to their misery, the homeless sleeping on the streets, factories closing and the affluent unabashed at flaunting their possessions, there is a persistent sense that something is awry with the nation, something far deeper than what party is in control of the White House. "One segment of the population...
...report draws the reader to the inner cities, where there exists "a persistent, large and growing underclass." In words which closely echo Kerner's assessment of Black ghettos in the 1960's, the inner cities are described as places of "crime, drug addiction, dependency on welfare and resentment against society in general and white society in particular...